Can Craft Beer Possibly Replace Card Players?

An excellent story on the state of beer in Belgium by Raf Casert of the Associated Press brings home an interesting point:

Leza Wauters remembers the good times well. "Oh, we had more than 50 cafes in Dworp," she said of the bucolic village 15 kilometres (10 miles) south of Brussels, part of a hilly area of pastures whose landscapes, and beers, figured in the paintings of the famous artist Breughel. "It was incredible — it was almost like everyone had a cafe." Now the village's pubs can be counted on two hands, she said. Her granddaughter Barbara Danis fondly remembers time spent at the "In de Welkom" but recognizes its days may be numbered. Most clients are of an older generation that used to congregate daily in the pubs but that is now fading away. "You used to have card players who came here every day," she said. Now, her grandmother complains, those games are over.

Here's the thing. If Steve Hindy is right, "craft beer drinkers are not brand-loyal the way mainstream beer drinkers have been" - which is a problem. Those card players of Dworp decades ago? They were loyal. They had something in common which was the backbone of both a community locally and, along with their fellows across Belgium, a key underlying element of the nation's beer economy. You see bits and pieces of loyalty when you think about craft beer. A surprisingly large number of small pubs across Maine have Allagash white on tap. Places like Portland, Oregon have clearly triggered a strong level of local pride in local beers. But for the most part, the economics of craft beer have deviated from the idea of the local pub of decades ago and even the local micro brewery of just a years ago. It has too great a level of disinterest for that sort of loyalty - the sort that goes through thick or thin.

If that is the case, if there is a great movable thirst that seeks out the next relationship before the partner has a clue that something is wrong, isn't the hope offered by Casert at the end of the article misplaced? To be fair, he speaks of micros and not craft - and in doing so illustrates something of the distinction. While micros may be able to replicate the old local, craft offers no such chance of assistance. So what is Belgium to do? Protectionist measures to address internationalist brewers whether macro or craft? Not likely. Treaties would never allow it. Money, after all, speaks for money. What is most likely is that mass media TV and digital toys will continue to ensure the card players never come back. Personal entertainments are simply too compelling. Modernity marches on. So is Belgian beer doomed as a result? The comment might Sven Gatz from the Belgian Brewers federation might sum it up best: "you cannot be a strong beer country only exporting beer..."

Maureen Ogle said this about the book: "... immensely readable, sometimes slightly surreal rumination on beer in general and craft beer in particular. Funny, witty, but most important: Smart. The beer geeks will likely get all cranky about it, but Alan and Max are the masters of cranky..."

Ron Pattinson said: "I'm in a rather odd situation. Because I appear in the book. A fictional version of me. It's a weird feeling."

Comments

I think Hindy is right in many respects, though wrong in another. Craft beer fans are not loyal to the particular brands of the breweries themselves, but are intensely loyal to the brand of craft beer itself. While this is probably a good thing because every new brewery will find a ready audience willing to at least try their beer, it does become a problem for the brewery if their products are not up to snuff (though I must admit there are a few breweries in my neck of the woods that seem to do well, but I can't for the life of me work out how as their beers are flawed in so many ways).

Again I think this comes down to the difference between drinkers and samplers/tickers. Drinkers when they find a beer they love just want more of it, while still trying other stuff they come back time and again to a beer they know and love. Samplers/tickers do endless flights of samples and consciously never build that relationship with the beer and by extension, the brewery.

From my experience in a brewery tasting room that also sells pints, the tickers outnumber the drinkers by about 5 to 1 - is it really a sustainable business model? I have to wonder sometimes...

I'm inclined to go the other way on this. I'm not stuck to a beer but rather to different breweries. If a brewery consistently puts out good beer in different styles, I am more inclined to try something else. If one brewery would put out 13 different beer a month then I probably wouldn't try another brewery. I like different beer.

Akin to good restaurants. I won't have the same thing time and time again but vary the menu with seasonality, interesting ingredients and preparations, then I'll be back.

A bit off topic, but I agree that loyalty and brand recognition go hand in hand. But I think the small craft breweries have done a disservice to themselves as far as branding goes. They simply offer too many styles, each with individual identities. These breweries want to be everything to everyone, and that can be a slippery slope. With few exceptions the anchor beer or beers concept, by which to build a brand off of, has given way to the idea that a brewery must produce as many kinds of beer as possible, using as many kinds of ingredients as possible, in order to gain recognition and compete against similarly sized small breweries. That beer, the brewery—and in turn the brewer—is then sold as being more innovative and/or creative than some other brewery.

I think a brewery that builds a brand around a few, really good quality beers (or even one—look at Heady Topper's success) that are easily recognized, has a better chance of building a loyal following than those who offer a laundry list of so-called "options". It just becomes too much to keep track of who's making what.

Craft beer fans can definitely be loyal to brands. Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams are great examples; the former in Northern California, the latter in Massachusetts.

While one could debate whether these two are authentically craft, I see Sierra Nevada on tap in almost every San Francisco bar. I love the Pale Ale, thus I've tried their Torpedo, Porter, and Hefeweizen.

Craft breweries, much like macro breweries, simply need time and a great product to earn loyalty. Also, I think brewpubs are essential here.

Damn. Deleted two real comments amongst 250 odd spam. Velky was saying something about the Brewers Association and then someone else started a sentence with something like "all these definitions amuse me because..." which looked a lot like drive-by hipster snark. Could be wrong.

I do see loyalty, but to breweries, not to brands. There's a brewery here in New Jersey that I've grown quite fond of, enough so that I'll most always order one of their beers when I find one on tap, or try anything new they offer. The variety certainly keeps me coming back. I suppose the question is whether or not that sort of model is sustainable. Is it better to have 10 varied beers that are pretty good, or two or three that are of very high, consistent quality?

So I'm not quite sure where we're at with loyalty, but I do see a lot of short attention spans. Comments about how certain legacy brewers around me aren't "interesting" enough. I'd like to think that consistency and quality would win out, but I'm not sure.

Alan is apparently a Gen X-er who has hit 40... err...44... err... 45... YIKES... 46 ... [ZOW-WEE!!] 48... jessh, now 51... and edits and writes about other stuff at his personal website Gen X at 40. Please email Alan or any of the authors at this blog's gmail account - please write if you want to join the ranks of authors of this site or just want to send in a story on your favorite beer or photo of your regular pub.

I have moved the content of the OCB Commentary Wiki here. It is now a static document and pretty much is locked in as understandings existed as of 2012. Probably needs its own wiki to update the content! Below are the original introductory remarks:

"The purpose of this wiki is to collectively make comments, add annotation, identify errata and suggest further sources to the text of The Oxford Companion to Beer. Members are asked to avoid comment about the authors, the structure of the text or other extraneous matters. This wiki is a not for profit project that reviews the text pursuant to the concept of "fair dealing for the purpose of criticism or review" under Canadian copyright law." Alan McLeod, wiki Organizer, and chief bottle washer at A Good Beer Blog. Motto? "Many hands make pleasant work." Alan McLeod, 25 October 2011. Please provide some information about yourself when making a request to join the wiki. Anonymous requests for membership will not be approved. Overly ardent and rudely put claims to authority will be cause for removal from the membership. As of 11 January 2012, 134 entries or 12.2% of the total of 1,100 received commentary, many with multiple comments. Eight of the photos have been corrected as well. That number rose to 151 by 13 May 2012.